Next round, Sagimori Arata steps up for Achiga and Funakubo Hiroko for Senriyama. Morigaki Yuuka from Kentani takes them to 2nd. Arata pulls it back a bit but not enough.

Koshigaya falls behind massively going into the final match making a two horse race between Kentani and Achiga for 2nd place whilst Senriyama still leads with a huge margin.

Shizuno heads out for the last match. We skip ahead and go to the final hand with Achiga trailing Kentani by around 12k points. Shizuno wins straight from Kentani with a 7 pairs win that takes them to 2nd place so they go through to the semis to face Shiraitodai.

As the girls go out for some ramen they hear Harue talking with Kumakura about going pro and how getting Achiga to the semis is a big plus. The girls feel like they were being used.

They then bump into Momoko Touyoko from Tsuruga academy.

Thoughts:

Hmm… didn’t show much of the match again, I don’t mind them saving it all for the more important matches with 3 tough well known opponents rather than 1.

They’ll face Shiraitodai next with the top 2 going through, so I’m expecting them to scrape through second place again. Maybe they will skip a lot of the match and the season finale is the final match. I guess that’s fine too, see a lot of old faces as well as seeing Teru play. Hopefully it’s gonna be good. And speaking of old faces, it’s nice seeing Momo again. I still remember her background story since she’s such a unique character.

I’d have thought they’d give Shizuno more of a showing than a single hand. Saving the best for last I hope… But even so, they made us want to see her strategy, and then didn’t show it. I find it a little irritating. But that’s how the majority of the season’s gone so far.

This whole thing with Harue going pro is obviously one massive misunderstanding that’ll be sorted out in the next episode, most likely. If not, it’ll certainly affect their performance and I don’t think they’ll lose just yet.

Anyway, Senriyama went through with flying colours as expected, and now I’m looking forward to seeing Teru play. Let’s see what kind of Mahjong demon is under that façade she put up to the journalists.